"Who makes adoption a success? We do: the kids and parents in the new family as we change shape to accommodate each other." With more than 70 real life stories, revealing moments of vulnerability and moments of joy, this book provides an authentic insight into adoption. These stories take the reader on a journey through every stage of the adoption process, from making the initial decision to adopt to hearing from adoptees, and offer an informative and emotive account of the reality of families' experiences along the way. It includes chapters on adopting children of all ages as well as sibling groups; adopting as a single parent; adopting as a same sex couple; adopting emotionally and physically abused children; the nightmare of adoption breaking down; contact with birth parents; tracing and social media and more. Adopting: Real Life Stories will be an informative and refreshing read for adopters, potential adopters, professionals and all those whose lives have in some way been touched by adoption or want to know more about it.

Across Europe young people in public care are around five times less likely to attend tertiary education than those who have not been in care. This book provides a comprehensive account of why this shocking discrepancy exists and outlines ways to address the imbalance. Drawing extensively on new original research, the book examines the participation of young people in care in further and higher education. It provides a historical and legislative overview of the topic and in-depth national case studies look at the situation in England compared with Denmark, Sweden, Spain and Hungary. The authors set out clearly what we can learn from these comparisons and how to create more equal opportunities for children and young people in care today. This important book will be essential reading for those dedicated to removing barriers to accessing to further and higher education, including FE and HE lecturers, student support staff, social workers, policymakers and researchers working across fields of education, sociology, psychology, social work and social policy.

Andy Pithouse and Alyson Rees use original research to identify key ingredients needed to help create successful foster placements and help prevent placement breakdown. Studying the lives and activities of 10 foster families who provide lasting and effective care, the authors explore the families' everyday worlds. They look at the negotiations, activities, settings, meanings, rituals and relationships which help to create their successful placements. The authors identify the main components which, according to the carers and the children, contribute to acceptance, belonging and stability in the family. The book examines the emotional and practical work involved in caring, and explores how it is received and reciprocated by fostered young people. With important insights into child and carer perspectives on fostering, this book is a source of invaluable information for foster carers, children's service professionals, and trainees and care staff who may be engaged with children who are looked after.

How do you give your adopted or fostered child the best opportunities to grow up to be happy, healthy and successful? In this accessible book, psychologist and trauma expert Dr. Sue offers simple advice to those supporting children aged 7+. She explains why adopted or fostered children can often experience self-esteem issues, the impact it can have on their lives, and offers everyday strategies to help the child to move beyond their trauma and develop healthy self-esteem. Ideal for foster and adoptive parents as well as professionals supporting children and families, this book reveals the powerful role you can play in your child's well-being.

Most children who are fostered or adopted have some level of contact with their birth family -- whether face-to-face or by letter -- yet most of the time the psychological impact of contact on the child isn't considered. This book explores what attachment, neuroscience and trauma tell us about how contact affects children, and shows how poorly executed contact can be unhelpful or even harmful to the child. Assessment frameworks are provided which take the child's developmental needs into account. The authors also outline a model for managing and planning contact to make it more purposeful and increase its potential for therapeutic benefit. The book covers the challenges presented by the internet for managing contact, unique issues for children in kinship care, problems that arise when adoptive parents separate and many other key issues for practice. Brimming with practical advice and creative solutions, this is an indispensable tool for social workers, contact centre workers, and other professionals involved in contact arrangements or the therapeutic support of fostered and adopted children.

How can professionals work together with foster carers to create stable and therapeutic foster placements? Team Parenting for Children in Foster Care describes a unique model of supporting children in care which involves foster carers and professionals working together in the best interests of the child. This book lays out the key principles of Team Parenting - to meet the needs of troubled young people in an integrated way and incorporate therapy within a wider team of social workers, therapists, psychologists and foster carers - as well as the theory behind it and interventions used. It details how the approach contributes to the recovery of looked after children and each chapter includes examples that illustrates how Team Parenting works in practice. Team Parenting for Children in Foster Care includes ideas for systems and individual practice that will inform and improve foster carers' and professionals' work in any setting.

Adopted children whose early development has been altered by abuse or neglect may form negative beliefs about themselves and parents, and may resist connecting with others. This book outlines how therapeutic stories can help children to heal and develop healthy attachments. With a thorough theoretical grounding, the book demonstrates how to create therapeutic stories that improve relationships, heal past trauma, and change problem behaviour. The story of a fictional family that develops its own narratives to help their adopted child heal illustrates the techniques. This second edition includes updated research on attachment, trauma and the developmental process; a new chapter on parental attunement and regulation; and a new chapter with full length samples of a variety of narrative types. The gentle and non-intrusive techniques in this book will be highly beneficial for children with attachment difficulties. This guide will be an invaluable resource for parents of adopted children and the professionals working with them.

Since the end of the Korean War, an estimated 200,000 children from South Korea have been adopted into white families in North America, Europe, and Australia. While these transnational adoptions were initiated as an emergency measure to find homes for mixed-race children born in the aftermath of the war, the practice grew exponentially from the 1960s through the 1980s. At the height of South Korea's "economic miracle," adoption became an institutionalized way of dealing with poor and illegitimate children. Most of the adoptees were raised with little exposure to Koreans or other Korean adoptees, but as adults, through global flows of communication, media, and travel, they have come into increasing contact with each other, Korean culture, and the South Korean state. Since the 1990s, as Korean children have continued to leave to be adopted in the West, a growing number of adult adoptees have been returning to Korea to seek their cultural and biological origins. In this fascinating ethnography, Eleana J. Kim examines the history of Korean adoption, the emergence of a distinctive adoptee collective identity, and adoptee returns to Korea in relation to South Korean modernity and globalization. Kim draws on interviews with adult adoptees, social workers, NGO volunteers, adoptee activists, scholars, and journalists in the U.S., Europe, and South Korea, as well as on observations at international adoptee conferences, regional organization meetings, and government-sponsored motherland tours.

For children growing up in foster care, the role of their birth parents is an important factor in the success of their long-term placements. Understanding the experiences of parents is therefore essential in order to develop effective social work practice with parents that can also ensure the best possible outcomes for children. Drawing on detailed and often moving interviews with parents, the book takes a chronological approach, starting with their accounts of family life before their children were taken into care, in particular the impact of drugs, alcohol and domestic violence. It goes on to explore their experiences of court and then how they seek to come to terms with their loss, sustain an identity as a parent and manage a relationship with their children through contact. Parents' views on what they find valuable and helpful in relationships with foster carers and social workers are also discussed. The book then draws on the views of social workers on the opportunities and challenges of supporting parents, while also remaining child-focussed. The authors set out a model of good practice, based on the lessons learnt from the experiences of these parents and social workers. This book will be essential reading for all child and family social workers, fostering social workers, independent reviewing officers, academics and foster carers.

Around three quarters of people who turn to adoption do so because of infertility and those working in this field need information, guidance and support to assist them in the process of adoption to support the adopters and to deal with any issues that may result from infertility. Adopting after Infertility is an accessible and informative interdisciplinary book that addresses the issues that professionals working with adopters and the adopters themselves face when going through the adoption process and the impact of infertility on their experiences. The book includes chapters on the effects of infertility, why people may choose adoption and the assessment and preparation process. It also covers what an Adoption Panel needs to know about the prospective parents, the experiences of those coming to adoption from minority communities or when living with health conditions and post-adoption support needs. Personal accounts by people who have experienced adopting after infertility are included throughout the book. This book will be essential reading for professionals and academics from a range of disciplines including social work, psychology, health, mental health and counselling. It will also be invaluable to students studying for post-qualifying awards.

Since the early 1990s, transnational adoptions have increased at an astonishing rate, not only in the United States, but worldwide. In "Belonging in an Adopted World, "Barbara Yngvesson offers a penetrating exploration of the consequences and implications of this unprecedented movement of children, usually from poor nations to the affluent West. Yngvesson illuminates how the politics of adoption policy has profoundly affected the families, nations, and children involved in this new form of social and economic migration.

Starting from the transformation of the abandoned child into an adoptable resource for nations that give and receive children in adoption, this volume examines the ramifications of such gifts, especially for families created through adoption and later, the adopted adults themselves. Bolstered by an account of the author's own experience as an adoptive parent, and fully attuned to the contradictions of race that shape our complex forms of family, "Belonging in an Adopted World" explores the fictions that sustain adoptive kinship, ultimately exposing the vulnerability and contingency behind all human identity.

Growing up in 70s Scotland as the adopted mixed raced child of a Communist couple, young Jackie blossoms into an outspoken, talented poet. Then she decides to find her birth parents... Based on the soul-searching memoir by Scots Makar Jackie Kay, Red Dust Road takes you on a journey from Nairn to Lagos, full of heart, humour and deep emotions. Discover how we are shaped by the folk songs we hear as much as by the cells in our bodies.

First Chance: How Kids with Nothing Can Change Everything examines the remarkable triumphs of young people considered least likely to attain a college degree: those who have experienced foster care (three percent graduation rate) or the incarceration of a parent, especially a mother (two percent graduation rate). Some 2.7 million schoolchildren have experienced parental incarceration, while nearly 500,000 are declared wards of the state annually. Yet their experiences receive little attention. The young people themselves are frequently hesitant to talk about their lives, burdened with a sense of shame, even though they are blameless.Philanthropist and author Robert O. Carr has turned the focus of his college scholarship program, Give Something Back, on these often forgotten and neglected kids. As their stories reveal, they have the smarts and drive to compete with peers from more comfortable backgrounds. The author argues that these young people can draw on their special and painful insights to forge powerful change, provided society acknowledges them-and extends a first chance.

The perfect starting point for parents of transracially adopted children and those who are considering adopting transracially. The Interracial Adoption Option is a personal guide to interracial adoption which draws on the lives and experiences of the authors, a white US couple, who adopt two African-American children. Starting from their decision to adopt their first child interracially, it describes the situations and decisions that followed as a result of their child's racial background. The authors' combine their personal experiences with practical advice. They address common issues like where to live, how to choose a doctor and how to take care of your child's hair and skin. They also tackle difficult questions such as, 'Does race matter?' 'Why is a healthy racial identity important?' and 'What do I do if I suspect my child is being treated unfairly because of his/her race?' An accessible introduction to the complex world of interracial adoption, this book is the first book you need to read if you are thinking of adopting transracially or have done so already.

How Does Foster Care Work? is an international collection of empirical studies on the outcomes of children in foster care. Drawing on research and perspectives from leading international figures in children's services across the developed world, the book provides an evidence base for programme planning, policy and practice. This volume establishes a platform for comparison of international systems, trends and outcomes in foster care today. Each contributor provides a commentary on one other chapter to highlight the global significance of issues affecting children and young people in care. Each chapter offers new ideas about how foster care could be financed, delivered or studied in order to become more effective. This book is important reading for anyone involved in delivering child welfare services, such as administrators, practitioners, researchers, policy makers, children's advocates, academics and students.

Do I have what it takes to be a successful adoptive parent?
Does my child consider me a successful parent?
Will I ever hear my rebellious teen say, "I love you"?
What tools do I need to succeed?
"
"In her groundbreaking first book, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew, " "Sherrie Eldridge gave voice to the very real concerns of adopted children, whose unique perspectives offered unprecedented insight. In this all-new companion volume, Eldridge goes beyond those insights and shifts her focus to parents, offering them much-needed encouragement and hope.
Speaking from her own experience as an adoptee and an expert in the field of adoption, Eldridge shares proven strategies and the moving narratives of nearly one hundred adoptive families, helping" "parents gain a deeper understanding of what is normal, both for their children and themselves. By first strengthening yourself as a parent, you'll be able to truly listen to your child, and to connect with him on every level, by opening the channels of communication and keeping them open forever. Then you and your child can grow closer through the practical exercises at the end of every chapter.
Discover how to
- be confident that your role in your child's life is vital and irreplaceable
- pass on the legacy of healthy self-care by assessing and regulating your stress
- communicate unconditional love to your child
- talk candidly with your child about her adoption and her birth family
- teach your family how to respond positively to insensitive remarks about adoption
- connect with other adoptive families-and build a support network
- plus learn to become a "warrior" parent...settle the "real parent" question...cope with emotional triggers-what to do when you "lose it" . . . celebrate the miracle of your family...and much more

Since the Korean War began, Western families have adopted more than 200,000 Korean children. Two-thirds of these adoptees found homes in the United States. The majority joined white families and in the process forged a new kind of transnational and transracial kinship. Kimberly D. McKee examines the growth of the neocolonial, multi-million-dollar global industry that shaped these families-a system she identifies as the transnational adoption industrial complex. As she shows, an alliance of the South Korean welfare state, orphanages, adoption agencies, and American immigration laws powered transnational adoption between the two countries. Adoption became a tool to supplement an inadequate social safety net for South Korea's unwed mothers and low-income families. At the same time, it commodified children, building a market that allowed Americans to create families at the expense of loving, biological ties between Koreans. McKee also looks at how Christian Americanism, South Korean welfare policy, and other facets of adoption interact with and disrupt American perceptions of nation, citizenship, belonging, family, and ethnic identity.